An official in the War Department, Ignacio Garcini wears the uniform of the Corps of Engineers. The embroidered red cross on his coat and the badge of the Order of Santiago are decorations he received in 1806 and must have been added later. After the French invasion of Spain in 1808, Garcini became a collaborator, and in 1811 he wrote the book Chronicle of Spain since the Reign of Charles IV: Account of the Persecution Suffered by Colonel D. Ignacio Garcini.

Catalogue Entry

Colonel Ignacio Garcini y Queralt was born in Tortosa in 1752, the son of Luis Sebastián Garcini and María Micaela Queralt. The Garcini family was of French origin, and Ignacio’s ancestors came from Saint Tropez. Since his youth, Garcini followed a military career and was active in the War Department (Despacho de Guerra). He is shown in the painting wearing the blue and red uniform of a Brigadier of Engineers (Brigadier de Ingenieros) (see Trapier 1964). He was awarded the Order of Santiago in 1806, and the badge and red cross referring to the Order were added to the portrait after that date. During the War of Independence, Garcini took an active part in the Spanish resistance against the French invaders. Between 1808 and 1809 he moved between Guadalajara, Aranjuez, Cordoba and Cádiz. He later collaborated with the French, and after Spain was divided into regional commissariats in 1809 he was nominated military intendant for Soria and Rioja by Joseph Bonaparte (Glendenning 1992). In 1811, Garcini published in Valencia a book entitled Cuadro de la España desde el reinado de Carlos IV. Memoria de la persecución que ha padecido el coronel D. Ignacio Garciny (Chronicle of Spain since the Reign of Charles IV: Account of the Persecution Suffered by Colonel D. Ignacio Garcini), in which he attacked the Spanish general José de Palafox. Garcini died in 1825.On January 19, 1801, Ignacio Garcini married in Madrid Josefa de Castilla Portugal y van Asbrock, who was also portrayed by Goya in 1804 (MMA 55.145.2). The two portraits are different in mode—martial and formal for Ignacio, unceremonious and romantic for Josefa—and it has recently been questioned whether they were intended to be pendants (Reuter 2001 and Tomlinson 2002). Both portraits, however, date from the same year and it seems likely that notwithstanding their differences in approach they were conceived at the same time. They may have originally been displayed in different spaces in the Garcini household, and that would have compensated for the inconsistency in manner between the two images.The portraits remained with the Garcini family until 1910, when Vicente Garcini, a nephew of Ignacio, sold both of them, through Ricardo Madrazo, to Colonel Oliver H. Payne in New York. His nephew, Harry Payne Bingham, bequeathed the paintings to the Museum in 1955.[Xavier F. Salomon 2012]

Francisco Alcántara. El Imparcial (May 10, 1900) [see Ref. Vega 2002], describes Garcini's wife as "a perfect dream of a beauty, a symbol of what her husband's name evokes for all good Spaniards [presumably in light of his role as a traitor during the War of Independence], a lively intelligence and acuteness, with a certain expression of malice and suspicion appropriate for the husband of such a woman".

Louisine W. Havemeyer. Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector. New York, 1961, p. 178, relates that she secured the two Garcini portraits for Colonel Payne through Ricardo de Madrazo.

Elizabeth du Gué Trapier. Goya and His Sitters: A Study of His Style as a Portraitist. New York, 1964, pp. 25, 54, no. 42, fig. 42, identifies the sitter's uniform as that of the Corps of Engineers and notes that he did not receive the red cross and badge of the Order of Santiago until 1806, so they must have been added to the portrait at a later date; comments that x-rays show that holes were pierced in the eyes and then repainted.

José Camón Aznar. Fran. de Goya. Vol. 3, Saragossa, 1981, p. 147, observes that although it is a commissioned work with a sober composition, Goya's mastery of technique still conveys the gallantry and humanity of his subject.

José Luis Morales y Marín. Goya: Catálogo de la pintura. Saragossa, 1994, pp. 35, 284, no. 347, ill. [English ed., 1997], calls it a conventional, commissioned portrait, although the painting of the head stands out for its great expressiveness.

Janis Tomlinson. Francisco Goya y Lucientes, 1746–1828. London, 1994, pp. 167, 170, 173, colorpl. 129, describes it as a "flat portrayal," less interesting than that of his wife, and adds that "contemporaries knew that the quality of a portrait by Goya depended upon his interest and the time he was willing to devote to it".

Susan Alyson Stein inGoya in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1995, pp. 23, 39–40, 45, 67, fig. 11, states that following their loan to the MMA Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition in 1920, the Garcini portraits remained on loan from Harry Payne Bingham until 1927; calls the two portraits "rigorously unsentimental".

Juliet Wilson-Bareau. "Goya in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Burlington Magazine 138 (February 1996), p. 101, describes the Garcini portraits as "extremely strange 'pendants'" that should have been reattributed as "not Goya"; finds the inscriptions unconvincing and adds that they were not exhibited until the "notoriously unselective" 1900 Goya exhibition in Madrid.

Isadora Rose-de Viejo inEtched on the Memory: The Presence of Rembrandt in the Prints of Goya and Picasso. Exh. cat., The Rembrandt House Museum. Blaricum, 2000, p. 55, calls it a mechanical, commonplace portrait in comparison to that of his wife.

Anna Reuter inGoya: La imagen de la mujer. Ed. Francisco Calvo Serraller. Exh. cat., Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid, 2001, p. 256, under no. 67, observes that, atypically for pendant portraits, there is no visual link between the paintings of the Garcinis to suggest their bond as a married couple, since they do not face one another and their dress is incompatible.